Motorola is bringing some of its headlining smartphones to the US, and they may be welcome upgrades if you were disappointed with previous models. To start, the 2023 Moto Edge+ is a significant upgrade that addresses some of last year's shortcomings. The new phone packs a smoother 165Hz 6.7-inch OLED screen, a speedier Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip and a larger 5,100mAh battery. And gone is the 2-megapixel depth sensor — instead, you'll get an actually-useful 12MP 2X telephoto camera to go alongside the 50MP standard and ultra-wide cams. A 60MP front sensor promises extra-detailed selfies.

The 8GB of RAM is unspectacular, but you'll get 256GB of 512GB of (non-expandable) storage as well as 68W fast wired charging, 15W wireless charging and 5W wireless power sharing. More importantly, Motorola is promising better update support than in the past — you'll get three years of OS upgrades and four years of bi-monthly security fixes. That's not quite up to Samsung's level (four years for both), but it might last the practical life of your device.

The price is also a major selling point. Where the 2022 Edge+ was priced like a flagship at $1,000, the 2023 version will be available for $800 when the unlocked version arrives May 25th at Amazon, Best Buy and Motorola. That makes it a relative bargain if you're looking for a big-screen phone with modern specs.

Motorola

There are more affordable phones coming, too. The 2023 editions of the Moto G 5G (pictured) and Moto G Stylus all more compelling if cost matters more than raw power. Both have 6.5-inch 720p displays, and you'll have to be content with either a Helio G85 (on the G Stylus) or a Snapdragon 480+ (G 5G) equipped with 4GB of RAM. You'll get up to 128GB of expandable storage, a 50MP (G Stylus) or 48MP (G 5G) main camera, a 2MP macro sensor and an 8MP front cam. As you'd expect in this class, you'll have to charge with a cable.

The Moto G Stylus arrives first, shipping May 5th for $200. It will come to prepaid carriers like Cricket and Straight Talk in the months ahead. The Moto G 5G debuts May 25th for $250, and will come to AT&T, Google Fi, T-Mobile and US Cellular, among others. There's no mention of a lengthy OS update policy, so you may not want to expect the Edge model's software longevity.

Tech companies are still withdrawing from Russia more than a year after the country invaded Ukraine. Tinder owner Match Group has revealed that it will completely withdraw its dating app brands from the Russian market by the end of June. The firm says it's "committed to protecting human rights" and is currently "taking steps" to limit access to its services before the exit.

Match Group hasn't said why it's pulling out now, or what it's doing to restrict access beforehand. We've asked the company for comment. It did acknowledge damage to its European region sales in March, a month after the invasion started.

Numerous tech companies exited Russia soon after the Ukraine invasion last February. Apple and Microsoft halted all sales in Russia in early March that year, while Netflix stopped streaming soon after freezing production of Russian originals. Internet giants were also quick to block Russian state media organizations RT and Sputnik. Non-technology brands like Coca-Cola and McDonald's also dropped Russia within months.

Whatever the reasons behind the timing, Match might not have much choice. The invasion has faced widespread condemnation, and there are no signs of a change of heart from Russian leadership. Jeff Perkins, the executive director of shareholder Friends Fiduciary Corp, tellsReuters that Match's continued presence in Russia is "not a good look" — it's doing business in a country accused of war crimes.

There's one less competitor in the robot vacuum world. Neato Robotics is shutting down as the company hasn't reached its "self-defined economic goals" for years, parent company Vorwerk Group tellsTechHive. The firm's sales haven't met expectations, in other words. Vorwerk is promising cloud and repair support to Neato customers for "at least" five years, so your robovac should continue to run for a while longer.

The move will affect 98 jobs, Vorwerk says. Users started worrying weeks ago, when users noticed a broken customer sign-in page. Neato's Facebook and Twitter accounts vanished, and support staff fell silent. Vorwerk is fixing the login issues and says they're not connected to the shutdown.

Neato emerged in 2005 and soon became one of the main competitors to iRobot's Roomba series. It stood out by pushing the limits of robot vacuum technology, such as by adding WiFi in 2011 and LiDAR mapping in 2020. Vorwerk bought Neato in 2017, but continued to run the brand independently. Neato ran into trouble, and restructuring efforts didn't turn the company around.

The closure isn't surprising. iRobot has long dominated robovacs, and claimed 46 percent of the market in 2020 according to Statista. Neato, by comparison, had roughly 3 percent in preceding years and was already fading away by 2020. Competitors like Anker's Eufy brand, Roborock and Shark have entered the field and sometimes undercut Neato on price.

A shutdown may not be good news for iRobot, though. American politicians are already concerned about the potential harm of Amazon's proposed iRobot acquisition to the competitive landscape, and European regulators are reportedly close behind. Neato's demise further reduces that competition, even if it hasn't been a heavyweight for a while.

Apple promised faster turnaround times for security patches with iOS 16 and macOS Ventura, and it's now delivering on that claim. The company has released its first Rapid Security Response updates for devices running iOS 16.4.1, iPadOS 16.4.1 and macOS 13.3.1. They're available through Software Update as usual, but are small downloads that don't require much time to install. MacRumors says the fix is deploying over the course of 48 hours, so don't be surprised if you have to wait a short while.

There have been hitches so far. Engadget and others have received an error warning that iOS can't verify the update as the device is "no longer connected to the internet." We've asked Apple for comment, but you may have to be patient with this software. To date, the upgrades have only been available to beta testers.

Rapid Security Response lets Apple fix vulnerabilities sooner than it would through conventional software updates. While you can disable them, they may be ideal for quickly fixing zero-day flaws that attackers can use right away. That, in turn, could prevent malware from rapidly spreading through the community — particularly among users who have automatic updates enabled.

The concept of emergency security updates isn't new, of course. Apple, Microsoft and others have posted out-of-schedule patches. This just streamlines the process, and (along with recent additions like Safety Check) provides some reassurance. You're less likely to spend days worrying that your data could be up for grabs.

Meta is once again holding a VR gaming event, and it won't be hard to tune in. The company has announced a 40-minute Quest Gaming Showcase streaming June 1st at 1PM Eastern through Facebook, Horizon Worlds, Twitch and YouTube. You can expect the usual batches of new games and gameplay footage, but this year's presentation will include a pre-show (starting at 12:45PM ET) featuring title updates and "debut" trailers. After the fact, there will be "deep-dive" talks with developers.

The tech firm is unsurprisingly quiet on specifics. However, we wouldn't count on new hardware. Meta previously noted that its next mainstream Quest headset will arrive later this year. If so, the virtual event may represent a swan song for the Quest 2 that highlights its last big games before its successor arrives.

The showcase comes at an important time for Meta. It recently completed its buyout of Within, the developer of the VR fitness game Supernatural. The industry heavyweight is still struggling to pivot to the metaverse, too. Its Reality Labs unit is still losing billions of dollars each quarter, and it recently cut the price of the Quest Pro by a third to $999 to spur adoption. The gaming event isn't likely to turn things around, but it may sustain interest in Meta's VR platform ahead of new headsets.

One of the pioneers of artificial intelligence has made a high-profile exit. Geoffrey Hinton, nicknamed the "godfather of AI," tellsThe New York Times he resigned as Google VP and engineering fellow in April to freely warn of the risks associated with the technology. The researcher is concerned that Google is giving up its previous restraint on public AI releases in a bid to compete with ChatGPT, Bing Chat and similar models, opening the door to multiple ethical problems.

In the near term, Hinton is worried that generative AI could lead to a wave of misinformation. You might "not be able to know what is true anymore," he says. He's also concerned it might not just eliminate "drudge work," but outright replace some jobs. Going forward, the scientist is concerned about both the possibility of fully autonomous weapons and the tendency of AI models to learn odd behavior from training data. While some of these issues are theoretical, Hinton fears an escalation that won't be checked without regulations or the development of effective controls.

Hinton says his stance began changing last year, when Google, OpenAI and others began creating AI systems that he believes are sometimes superior to human intelligence. AI has developed rapidly in just the past five years — it's "scary" what could happen in the next five, the researcher suggests.

In a statement to Engadget, Google's chief scientist Jeff Dean says his firm is still dedicated to a "responsible approach" and on guard for "emerging risks." The search giant recently released a rough version of its Bard chatbot in March following months of rumors the company is worried about the competitive threat of generative AI. Before then, it refused to publicly release AI models like its art-oriented Imagen over the potential for toxic content and copyright violations.

Hinton has devoted his career to studying the neural networks that are often key to AI, but is best known for developing an object recognition system in 2012. His breakthrough neural net could use training images to help recognize common objects. Google bought Hinton's DNNresearch startup in 2013, and the underlying concept of his invention helped foster a surge of development that led to today's generative tech.

Hinton isn't alone. A number of influential academics and tech luminaries, including Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak, recently signed an open letter calling for a six-month pause on AI development to address ethical and safety problems. As one of the most prominent figures in the industry, though, Hinton's word carries significant weight.

You don't have to buy a whole new router if your existing WiFi network coverage isn't quite cutting it. Amazon is running a sale on TP-Link WiFi extenders. The steepest discount is on the WiFi 6-based RE500X, which now sells for $55 (39 percent off), but you can also buy our favorite budget extender, the WiFi 5-capable RE315, for just $32 (normally $50). That's the best price we've seen for the entry model all year, and makes it an easy choice if you're comfortable with your existing router's peak speed.

All of the WiFi extenders add up to 1,500 square feet of additional coverage. That's enough to make your network usable in the basement, a far-off bedroom or the backyard. They support OneMesh networking to easily grow your network if you have a compatible TP-Link router. And if you need a physical link (such as for a console or printer), they include Ethernet jacks to either plug in wired devices or create a wireless access point.

Your main concern may be future-proofing. The WiFi 6 models including the RE600X, now at $68) may be a better long-term value if you expect to upgrade to the more recent wireless standard in the near future. You won't have to replace your extender if you buy a more advanced router. And if you're looking to upgrade your overall performance, you may want to consider a WiFi 6E system instead. For many people, though, TP-Link's offerings are an affordable way to boost signal quality.

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More media outlets are using AI to write articles, if not as aggressively as others. VentureBeat editorial director Michale Nuñez tellsBloomberg his publication is using Microsoft's Bing Chat to help edit and write stories. Reporters are encouraged to slip AI-written "sentences and fragments" into articles so long as they're accurate and independently verifiable.

The OpenAI-powered tech is akin to having "another person on the team," Nuñez says. It theoretically summarizes content in seconds instead of hours. VentureBeat doesn't disclose the use of AI content provided it's limited and authentic, but also doesn't intend to create whole articles using the technology.

Word surfaced in January that CNET had been using AI to produce entire financial explainer articles since November. Although characterized as a trial, over half of the articles required at least minor corrections. Some effectively plagiarized their sources. It also wasn't clear that algorithms had produced the pieces.

Generative AI like Bing Chat, ChatGPT and Google Bard has become increasingly popular as a creative tool, for search results and even for entertainment. However, there are ethical concerns that include plagiarism, basic accuracy and cheating. There are also questions of trust — should creators disclose uses of AI, even if it's minor and undetectable? While the broader news industry isn't expected to completely replace human writers, there are worries AI might be used to reduce the need for real people.

Never mind using AI to write stories — Walmart is finding it helpful for landing a good bargain. The retailer tellsBloomberg that it's using a chatbot from Pactum AI to automatically negotiate some supplier deals. The technology is not only saving an average of three percent on contracts, but preferable to the vendors. Three out of four suppliers prefer haggling with the AI over a human, Walmart says.

Pactum's system just asks Walmart to set its budget and requirements, such as discounts and payment terms. It compares a supplier's demands with trends, commodity values and competitors' costs. After that, the AI can strike a deal within a matter of days, rather than the weeks or months of conventional talks. Walmart first piloted the tool in Canada, but has since expanded its use to the US, Chile and South Africa.

The AI is currently negotiating only for shopping carts and other store essentials, rather than the products you find on the shelves. It's also not completely replacing humans. At present, Pactum's tech is mainly being used for savings in contracts that aren't necessarily worth much time. The bot still has to negotiate with a real person, so completely automated discussions aren't any option in the near future. This is more to lighten the load of busy procurement teams than to avoid hiring.

That might not reassure people worried about their jobs. The reliance on AI comes right as many companies are conducting mass layoffs to endure a rough economy. Chatbots like this can help Walmart and others minimize the effects of job cuts and hiring freezes. Moreover, Walmart has spent years experimenting with robots that could reduce the need for staff. Humans aren't going away any time soon, but the company isn't depending on them as much as in the past.

This is a great opportunity to buy an affordable smartwatch for your springtime runs and bike rides. Amazon is selling the Fitbit Versa 4 at a near-record low price of $160, or $40 off. The bargain applies regardless of color, too. And if you want Fitbit's most advanced model, the Sense 2 is down to $250, or $50 off.

The Versa 4 is a refinement of Fitbit's middle-of-the-road smartwatch, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. You still get robust fitness and health tracking, with 40 exercise modes, sleep monitoring and even a stress management score. It also offers support for Google Maps (on Android for now, iOS later in the spring) and Google Wallet — you can use two of the most common navigation and tap-to-pay services on your wrist without giving up some of Fitbit's advantages, including the six-day claimed battery life.

There are a few caveats. You'll need to pay for a Premium subscription (after the first six months, that is) if you want perks like guided programs and personalized insights. And while you will get some core smartwatch features, you'll want to consider the Pixel Watch if you're willing to trade battery life for a much more robust app ecosystem that still preserves Fitbit's functionality. At $160, however, the Versa 4 is far easier to rationalize if you only want the essentials.

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